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We don’t drink the same way in every season of life — and that’s not random. In this episode, Mike explores seven subtle signs that your drinking may be reflecting something deeper, drawing from Wayne Dyer’s Seven Faces of Intention. This isn’t about cutting back or fixing anything. It’s about noticing how stress, pressure, self-talk, pace, and internal alignment shape the role alcohol plays. If drinking sometimes feels heavier — or just different than it used to — this episode offers a thoughtful lens for understanding why.
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ABOUT SUNNYSIDE: Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol moderation app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.
Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.
--
Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
CONNECT WITH SUNNYSIDE:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
- Twitter: https://x.com/joinsunnyside
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside
ABOUT SUNNYSIDE: Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol moderation app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.
Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.
Creators and Guests
What is Journey to the Sunnyside?
Journey to the Sunnyside is a top 1% podcast, reaching over 500,000 listeners every week. It’s your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol—whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting.
While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, diving into topics like mindful drinking, sober curiosity, moderation, and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert insights, and science-backed strategies, we help you find what actually works for your journey.
Hosted by Mike Hardenbrook, a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, the show is dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol—without shame, judgment, or rigid rules.
This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the leading platform for mindful drinking. Want to take the next step in your journey? Head over to sunnyside.co for a free 15-day trial.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in our episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We’re committed to sharing diverse perspectives on health and wellness. If you’re concerned about your drinking, please consult a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical providers and the content is not medical advice. We do not endorse drinking in any amount.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Journey to the Sunnyside. Today, I wanna talk about something that sits underneath drinking. Not necessarily how much you drink, not necessarily around strategies we can take to drink less, but instead how you relate to yourself and how that relationship quietly shapes the way alcohol tends to show up in our life. And after talking to thousands of people about their drinking, most people, they know why they reach for a drink in that moment.
Speaker 1:You know? It's pretty clear. Sometimes it's for relaxation. Sometimes it's for connection. Sometimes it's for stress relief, a way to shift gears at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:But here's what's harder to see is that state that happens before you even take that first sip. And why that's significant is that's often where alcohol reflects how someone is relating to themselves. There's actually a framework that I want to borrow from today and share with you by Doctor. Wayne Dyer. He is one of my idols, and in his book, The Power of Intention, there's a chapter where he talks about alignment and how you can actually recognize it by how life feels.
Speaker 1:And he calls them the seven faces of intention. Now, I'm not here to teach the book. What I really want to do is borrow from this lens. Because when life feels aligned, drinking usually ends up feeling more like it takes a backseat in our lives. But when life feels off, alcohol tends to carry much more weight in our lives.
Speaker 1:And that's a signal to pay attention to. Now, you don't drink the same way in every season of your life. For example, when you're stressed, when your nervous system is running on overdrive, when you've been holding it all together all day. Drinking tends to take on way more importance and as I said before, heaviness. But when life feels lighter, drinking often tends to as well.
Speaker 1:Now I know there are also instances though where you might say, yeah, but I was actually I was just having a good time and, yep, I overdid it. I feel bad about it, but I'm not really connecting that to how I feel about myself. And that's a real observation. And sometimes the night, it just unfolds that way. The conversation's good.
Speaker 1:The food is great. The wine is good. And maybe time and the amount you're drinking just gets away from you. And sometimes that just happens. Now what's useful is to notice the starting point.
Speaker 1:Are you already relaxed before that first step? Or does that first step help you to get to that place? Now that's just information that we want to be aware of. But let's get into these seven phases of intention that Wayne talks about. And the first one is creativity.
Speaker 1:Not creativity like art, but creativity like options. Now what I mean by this is that when people feel aligned, they feel more flexible, more malleable to life. There's room for things. You don't feel so locked in. You can change plans.
Speaker 1:You can respond instead of react. You don't feel so trapped in this day that you're having. Now when creativity drops, life starts to get more narrow. You have the same routines, the same pressures, you're stuck in the same loop, or as they say, stuck in a rut. And when life starts to feel like this loop, alcohol often becomes that punctuation mark at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:It is the thing that you use that shifts the tone. It creates the contrast. It marks the transition from responsibility to relief. And that usually says more about the shape of the day and where you are aligned than it does the drink itself. Okay.
Speaker 1:Another phase that Wayne talks about is kindness. You see this in how people talk to themselves, for example. When alignment is there, there's more patience with yourself. There's less internal criticism. You don't replay every single mistake throughout the day.
Speaker 1:You don't talk to yourself in a way that you've never would talk to somebody else. That's a key point to remember. And you allow the day to be imperfect. And when it's not there, people push much harder. They power through the day.
Speaker 1:They replay the day over and over. They carry everything really tightly, even when the day is technically over. And alcohol often shows up right where that pressure needs to be released. Now a lot of people that struggle here, they're deeply conscientious. They care.
Speaker 1:They carry responsibility. They try to do things well. Kindness toward yourself doesn't remove alcohol from the picture, but it does change the role that alcohol plays. The next phase I want to talk about is love. Now, we're not talking about romance here.
Speaker 1:We're talking about unconditional allowing. About letting yourself be human without keeping score. And when that's present, rest fits more naturally into your day. Calm doesn't feel like something that you have to earn. You don't need a reason to slow down.
Speaker 1:You don't negotiate with yourself about when you're allowed to stop. And when it's not there, everything else gets postponed. I'll relax later. I'll slow down once I'm done. I'll take care of myself after today.
Speaker 1:And when this is going on, people usually use alcohol as a way to stop having to manage themselves. Another phase is beauty. Beauty shows up as presence. When alignment's there, moments tend to land perfectly, and you notice things when they show up. You're actually where you feel you should be.
Speaker 1:Conversations feel like conversations. A meal feels like a meal, and everything else doesn't disappear into this blur. When it's not there, life speeds up. Meals are rushed. Everything sort of blurs together.
Speaker 1:Evenings sort of disappear sometimes into a bottle. And alcohol can slow things down, but it's all artificial. It can help to anchor attention when everything else feels like it's moving really too fast. Now the next phase is expansion, and this is a big one. Expansion feels open, spacious, unforced.
Speaker 1:There's a sense of possibility, even if nothing dramatic is happening. Contraction on the other hand, contraction feels tight and pressured and narrowed. And stress contracts, overthinking contracts, self judgment contracts. And what happens with all this contraction is that drinking follows. Not because alcohol is necessarily the goal, but it's the tool to relief.
Speaker 1:So once you see that pattern, you begin to ask different questions. Instead of asking, Why do I want this drink? You start maybe asking, Where did my day feel so tight and constricted? Where did I lose space? Where did I brace instead of breathe?
Speaker 1:And sometimes when we ask these questions, they tend to be more useful in our actions than actually setting rules. Now the last phase that Wayne talks about is receptivity. This is where effort drops. You stop forcing answers. You stop trying to manage every single outcome.
Speaker 1:And you allow yourself to listen instead of trying to repair and fix and be proactive. When receptivity grows, habits shift differently. They don't do it through willpower. They do it through awareness, through noticing, through allowing. And those are quite different than trying to control, which we all like to try and control.
Speaker 1:But sometimes the only way to that outcome is by releasing control and getting aligned. And that's why mindful drinking works for so many people. It doesn't ask you to fight alcohol or fight your urges or power through it. It only asks you to understand the role that it's playing. And understanding, that changes the relationship.
Speaker 1:Alright. Here's the bigger picture I want to leave you with today. Your relationship with alcohol isn't separate from the rest of your life. It's woven into it. It reflects how much space you have, how much pressure you're carrying, how kind you are to yourself when no one's watching.
Speaker 1:That doesn't mean that every single drink means something really serious or has to go all these layers deep. And it doesn't mean that you need to analyze yourself every single time that you pour a glass or grab a beer out of the fridge. It just means that alcohol can be more useful information when you're more curious to learn and to listen. And often the changes people want around drinking don't start with drinking at all. So instead of action steps or rules, I'll leave you with a few questions to sit with.
Speaker 1:When you reach for a drink, what am I really reaching for in that moment? Does this feel like expansion or contraction? What would a little bit of kindness towards myself look like tonight? You don't need to answer all these perfectly, of course. And in fact, you don't need to do anything with them right away.
Speaker 1:Just noticing is enough and awareness does the rest. All right. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week and until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.